Help Psychologist is quitting, suggests I “work on myself”

[ladidabi]

I have no idea how to deal with this. A month before she is quitting she announces today at my appointment that she is quitting for new position.

What upsets me the most is that the past three appointments, she suggested joining STEPPS, a group program - which is previously have been against. I have my reasons to not do group, and no I understand why it was brought up again.

She said for now they doubt I can get any therapy individually like I do now, and would probably have to end up doing the "therapy" myself at home.

I feel hopeless. I don't want to lose the opportunity to talk, because I can't do this alone. I am getting better in comparison to last year, but that can't be the reason to let me go… especially since the doctor told me they want to put me on antidepressants after I finish tapering off quetiapine, which is basically them giving me meds and sending me off

 

[sadAndLost]

get a better therapist I would suggest.
But I've seen countless therapists through the years, and I took a lot of meds including quetiapine.
And I'm still suicidal and want to quit life

 

[ladidabi]

get a better therapist I would suggest.
But I've seen countless therapists through the years, and I took a lot of meds including quetiapine.
And I'm still suicidal and want to quit life

Do you mean private? I currently am under public healthcare

I'm sorry you're still there. I'm personally trying to avoid meds because long term use quetiapine has done damage, and I notice this especially starting to taper off…

 

[sadAndLost]

Do you mean private? I currently am under public healthcare

I'm sorry you're still there. I'm personally trying to avoid meds because long term use quetiapine has done damage, and I notice this especially starting to taper off…

yeah, a private therapist might help, but I don't sincerly believe a therapist can help
thank you.. yeah, avoid them as much as possible, it did some damage to me

 

[saultissad]

As someone who has been in therapy since I was 3, I find that most therapy is not very helpful.

 

[ladidabi]

As someone who has been in therapy since I was 3, I find that most therapy is not very helpful.

It hasn't necessarily been helpful to me either in terms of solving problems. However, it did give me some comfort being heard while unfiltered (to an extent, I'm not losing my license again). It made me feel validated. The only reason they are considering letting me go is solely because my therapist if quitting and they likely have no one to take that spot, or not enough workers to take all of her patients, considering they have multiple people. Every appointment I tell her how miserable I am, so this time it actually felt invalidating being told to do group therapy, or work on myself on my own. It's literally the ultimatum I got by my second therapist, when I was, and looked the worst.

I'm sorry you don't feel you get anything out of it.

 

[sorrynormal]

As someone who has been in therapy since I was 3, I find that most therapy is not very helpful.

As someone who has spent 23yrs in and out of therapy. Therapy is NOT about the client, its about who has the power to send you to one.

 

[Cavalcade]

Would it be possible for her to make a referral on your behalf to another clinician? In my experience, this is something they generally are capable of- internal referrals tend to be a bit faster than external waiting lists. Even if they don't have another professional at their practice or in their network they can directly connect you with, they should be capable of compiling a list of clinicians in the area (ideally free or low cost, some do subsidized or sliding scale fees) or general resources, like drop in sessions, warm and hot lines, peer support groups, etc.

Most of the better therapists I've met will want to establish a transition of care plan for their patients, and part of that involves compiling said resources, making sure the client has access to their records and history of care to provide to future providers to inform future care, a decompression and processing session together to say goodbye, etc. If not, you may be able to reach out to whoever runs the administrative side to see if they have any more generalized resource lists or know of anything in the area- front desk admin were always helpful when I spoke to them in person.

 

[sorrynormal]

Would it be possible for her to make a referral on your behalf to another clinician? In my experience, this is something they generally are capable of- internal referrals tend to be a bit faster than external waiting lists. Even if they don't have another professional at their practice or in their network they can directly connect you with, they should be capable of compiling a list of clinicians in the area (ideally free or low cost, some do subsidized or sliding scale fees) or general resources, like drop in sessions, warm and hot lines, peer support groups, etc.

Most of the better therapists I've met will want to establish a transition of care plan for their patients, and part of that involves compiling said resources, making sure the client has access to their records and history of care to provide to future providers to inform future care, a decompression and processing session together to say goodbye, etc. If not, you may be able to reach out to whoever runs the administrative side to see if they have any more generalized resource lists or know of anything in the area- front desk admin were always helpful when I spoke to them in person.

I just had a therapist out of the blue go on vacation for two weeks, come back and drop all her insurance clients. Her 'referral' was 'go on psychology today and find someone'. I wouldn't get your hopes up. There's also pretty much zero regulation or consequences for therapists who drop or abandon clients. It's all about what's best for the therapist...

 

[Cavalcade]

I just had a therapist out of the blue go on vacation for two weeks, come back and drop all her insurance clients. Her 'referral' was 'go on psychology today and find someone'. I wouldn't get your hopes up. There's also pretty much zero regulation or consequences for therapists who drop or abandon clients. It's all about what's best for the therapist...

I'm sorry that you've experienced this recently- it's so destabilizing, and incredibly unprofessional. I've had a mixed experience with how therapists have handled this, personally- some have been downright awful about it, similar to your situation (with her going on maternity leave suddenly, and no one thinking to inform her patients that she would be summarily dropping them, which led to a nightmare of trying to retrieve my patient notes from her), and others have been very considerate and mindful while ending our sessions- including one who made an internal referral to a colleague of theirs at the same practice and thus allowed me to skip the waiting list that was about a year and a half for an initial assessment/intake interview with that trauma specialist.

It is unfortunate how little regulations or consequences there are within the field. I've had better experiences in private practice, especially those who work in centres coordinated around serving a particular demographic, (such as a lovely one that booked appointments to ensure traumatized women would never have to share waiting room space with men, they mostly worked with survivors of extreme sexual abuse, domestic violence, sex trafficking, etc) but those are pricy and not always accessible.

OP, is it possible to 'follow' the clinician to their new practice? I had a therapist leave to establish her own practice, but she was willing to continue keeping patients on her caseload if they could physically make it to the new location, or were willing to accept online therapy via video conferencing through a secure platform as an alternative- though this can also be out of people's budget if they jack up the costs.

 

[sorrynormal]

OP, is it possible to 'follow' the clinician to their new practice?

Sure, if I could afford to pay 150/hr for her services, bc she no longer takes ANY insurance.

 

[Cavalcade]

Sure, if I could afford to pay 150/hr for her services, bc she no longer takes ANY insurance.

Ah, I was referring to the original thread's OP (confusingly written on my part, I now see).

I'm sorry to hear that, though.

I've been similarly out of luck with access to therapy- as the tier of specialists I was previously seeing while I had fantastic coverage charge between 250-500$ hourly at normal rates. I would love to be able to just see someone cheaper- but I wind up repeatedly being fired as a patient because 'I think that the scope of your care is outside of my ability to provide' and then comes the endless paperwork, waiting lists, interviewing process (wherein they expect you to hash out the overview of your trauma history and modality experiences), and so on. It was practically a full time job, just trying to get into therapy.

I hope that you're able to find something that helps you in the interim. I sometimes talk to warm lines when I don't want to burden my loved ones further, and I find that journalling helps me vent some of my frustrations to prevent some of the more catastrophic emotional breakdowns. There's also free DBT tools and workbooks online that I use to re-enforce some of the DBT skills learning we covered in therapy, since a lot of that is self taught and practiced outside of periods of immense dysregulation. (I was not being treated for BPD, which DBT is primarily used for, but it was more so to bring down heightened states of emotion while being triggered during talk therapy progressing towards CPT.)

 

[Blue Dream]

I feel hopeless. I don't want to lose the opportunity to talk, because I can't do this alone. I am getting better in comparison to last year, but that can't be the reason to let me go… especially since the doctor told me they want to put me on antidepressants after I finish tapering off quetiapine, which is basically them giving me meds and sending me off

Why not give the meds a shot? They could change your life.
I know at least in my case the meds have been far more helpful than any therapy.

 

[ladidabi]

Why not give the meds a shot? They could change your life.
I know at least in my case the meds have been far more helpful than any therapy.

Out of desperation I was on Cipralex/Lexapro exactly a year ago. It broke me down really bad. I only did 4 months. Tapering off Quetiapine due to being given too high dosage right now. I have decided to taper off to 0mg at some point. I'm afraid of what it will do with my brain long term. Also afraid of how it will affect me while on it. I will consider it when the time comes.